things my heart still needs to know
by Lang Noi
Summary: After everything, Robin would still like to know who he was before Grima. But the only place he knows to look is Plegia, and the only person who might be able to help is his sorta-sister, Aversa. It's time for a family reunion. (Aversa would like to have been informed ahead of time, thanks.)


**Summary:** After everything, Robin would still like to know who he was before Grima. But the only place Rhe knows to look is Plegia, and the only person who might be able to help is his sorta-sister, Aversa. It's time for a family reunion. (Aversa would like to have been informed ahead of time, thanks.)

**Notes:** This story's title is totally from that one song from the film _Anastasia_. What a way to brand my first _Fire Emblem_ story, huh?

In this story, Chrom and Robin did not recruit all of the Spotpass characters. They managed to grab Priam, Aversa, and the alternate Yen'fay, but Gangrel, Walhart, and Emmeryn are all canonically dead. Both Priam and Yen'fay disappeared immediately after the war against Grima concluded.

This story absolutely contains my interpretations of what a Divine Dragon Tribe manakete could be like, if not tied to being a palette swap of Nowi (due to hardware limitations). Tiki's dragon form pulls from her older, fluffy incarnations from the previous games, while Morgan's pulls from both that dragon design as well as Grima's true form.

Background pairings include Robin/Tiki, Henry/Lissa, Gaius/Tharja, Laurent/Lucina, and Chrom/Sumia.

* * *

The war against Grima and the Grimleal and the Risen ended amid shouts and tears of almost disbelieving joy. The Shepherds—the core of the Ylissean allied forces for the last three years—survived despite the odds. Their greatest and most hateful enemy disappeared with the dawn, gone like morning mist, and those who remained were fervently, terribly grateful.

There was empty space where Robin should've been.

Few of the Shepherds grieved—after everything they'd been through, the general feeling was shot through with thread of uncertain, buoyant hope. Between the successful Rite of Awakening, Naga's miracles speeding the Shepherds to the nape of Grima's vast neck, to Robin throwing Grima's power by the wayside and conquering his supposed fate, it was hard for anyone to say that their faith was unjustified.

Aversa shared it, which was quite the feat.

Perhaps Robin had one last miracle in him yet.

Now Aversa just had to decide what a future free from Grima's influence would look like. For her. On her own.

She hadn't thought of the future meaningfully in almost two decades. It was like stretching an unused muscle, and the strain alone almost made her shy away from the effort. Aversa wrangled her thoughts back on topic with the same merciless manner she perfected against real foes.

With the Grimleal, there was no future. There never could be if their god remained one of annihilation. And quite aside from the reality that most of them were dead now, Master Vali—Validar's truth was that hope held no meaning. In his eyes, all glory would be Grima's alone, above a dead, forgotten world. Grima's mercy was a perfect, self-contained contradiction.

Very past tense, now.

So many things were in the past, leaving only the yawning maw of the years ahead.

To think, this morning everyone was quite concerned there would be no tomorrow. At least, not one they would live to—or _ wish _ to—live long enough to see come to pass. So much changed in a handful of hours.

In the wake of it all, the Shepherds' forward camp buzzed with activity.

Naga's decision to spirit them away to Grima's weak point luckily obliged her to send them back the same way. Had it not, the length of their triumphant futures would have been the exact span of time required for them to plummet from the sky once Grima blew away mid-flight. But this version of time was kind, and so they were all still alive. The sound of cheerful arguments, clanging metal, and other camp dismantling noises left Aversa no doubt that the world continued on while she kept her head in the clouds.

Aversa didn't know what to do. Even if asked later, she wouldn't say the feeling of being one step away from a cliff was intimidating. She rode a pegasus into battle. She knew exactly how far she could fall before the ground leapt up to meet her.

"Hey! I could use a hand—oof!" called the princess of Ylisse, before being cut off by her own clumsiness. One of them, at least; due to Naga's other little tricks and events well beyond Aversa's ken, there were four princesses now.

Not six months before this moment, Aversa would've made a sly threat about pruning a family tree or two. Poison dripped from her very pores and seeped into the world around her like some fetid stench, ruining every life she deigned to touch. All but the one who most deserved her ire.

Now, she patted Sombra's dark neck and headed off to see what the younger part-time pegasus rider was doing with her time.

The answer turned out to be "packing, with a heaping helping of incompetence."

Princess Lissa should've had the help of her brother's faithful bodyguard, but even Sir Frederick the Wary had better places to be in the immediate wake of a war. Her nieces and son were elsewhere, trying to get ahead of any potential celebration until everyone returned to Ylisstol. Out in Plegia, they were not safe. The Grimleal died in droves and their god was ash, but common Plegian citizens would not react well to the presence of so many foreigners so soon after…everything.

Aversa pulled the collapsed tent aside, revealing Princess Lissa on her back like an overturned turtle, under a pile of possessions including spare staves, a foldable camp table, a bedroll, and a travel trunk. The crowning piece of the whole arrangement was a knitted abomination that looked more like the Mark of Grima than the scarf she alleged the other night.

"Thanks," said Princess Lissa. She sat up, dislodging some of the mess, and added, "I didn't mean to pull you away from what you were doing."

"You can hardly interrupt if I wasn't doing anything," Aversa replied. She flicked a wrist and hexed all of the tent's contents back into order. As though tugged by invisible hands, the mess righted itself by the time Princess Lissa managed to clamber to her feet.

Princess Lissa looked at her while straightening her dress over its wire hoops. Aversa had no idea what she saw, except for a witch who'd once had a hand in killing her older sister. At King Gangrel's order or Validar's hardly mattered.

"Chrom and I won't let it end here. When I said we'd search every open field in the entire world to find Robin again, I wasn't joking at all," she said. "We'll get him back."

Aversa closed her eyes and bit the inside of her lip. The tent was back in order. She didn't need to hold conversations she wasn't ready for with people who didn't like her.

To her surprise, though, the little princess took one of Aversa's trembling hands in hers. When Aversa opened her eyes again, the girl's brows were knit and mouth set in a grim line of pure determination.

"Nowi told me that dark mages can track people with spells. Henry and Tharja both agreed to help us find him, but I thought you'd want to pitch in, too." Princess Lissa squeezed her hand again. "If you can help us—"

"You have my aid whenever you wish it," Aversa interrupted, drawing a pleased smile from the princess. "I cannot accept an outcome where Robin leaves us all behind." She shook her head slowly. "Besides, that hapless fool cannot miss our victory celebrations, can he?"

Princess Lissa laughed. "Definitely not!"

* * *

In the end, the Shepherds scoured southern Ylisse with the help of the three Plegian dark mages among their ranks, crisscrossing the land for weeks. Without using manakete body parts as reagents—Tharja used _ all _ of Nowi's toenail clippings, and no one wanted to push for more—the spell's precision improved not at all with more mages involved. Nevertheless, the Shepherds fanned out across what seemed like the entire continent, always looking for their lost friend.

They searched. Organization duties fell to Miriel's son, if only to coordinate their expenditures. Boots worn through, horses judiciously rested or replaced, and so on.

And of course, the ones who found him in the end were the Exalted King Chrom and his sister Princess Lissa. Lying in a field, just like they'd found him the first time.

Aversa stood aside as they led him by the hand back to the remainder of their party—consisting of Queen Sumia, Princess Cynthia, and Princess Lucina. He looked remarkably not-dead for a man last seen withering into wind-tossed dust on the back of a dragon god. A little thinner and perhaps quieter than he once was, but alive and among friends again. Aversa expected both of those more unfortunate conditions to be righted shortly.

Just preferably not by the Exalt's own hand. Even as divorced as Aversa was from the core of the Shepherds, she heard horror stories of cooking contests from the camp blabbermouths sometimes.

Tiki and Morgan, Robin's wife and precious daughter, were in Southtown and resting from their leg of the search when the victorious branch of the Shepherds arrived. Their reunion involved both being tossed off their mattresses, Morgan charging out of the rented room she shared with her mother, and both green-haired women tackling their missing family member hard enough to send all three of them sprawling into the grass. Tiki even managed to lift her husband and daughter together and spin them around, laughing through tears.

Aversa stilled her shaking hands and hid her watery smile.

And after the celebrations are finished, over the course of a week and a half of solid partying, the Shepherds went their separate ways. Life moved on.

Aversa packed her belongings, wished a fond goodbye to the people who let her turn her magic on a dark god, and retired to the most mountainous part of Plegia. Her hometown was small and oft-forgotten, even by her, but there she tried to rebuild the life stolen from her by the Grimleal.

She expected to be left alone.

* * *

Settling into a life free of the Grimleal was harder than Aversa imagined.

It wasn't that she thought turning her entire life around would be easy. She spent almost twenty years under the thumb of an apocalypse cult. Now she understood the way even other Plegians talked about them. The fear was all-encompassing among survivors of the war, even more so than it had been before. The truth was that the Grimleal were never respected or loved, only obeyed out of sheer terror. For most of their history, they were obeyed, but not _ elevated. _ Were it not for their unswerving support of the Plegian royal family and thus their reliability as a power-base, the Grimleal would have been forced underground centuries ago, even in Plegia.

Aversa spent the majority of Gangrel's war as his right-hand woman, fanning the flames of his hatred into a firestorm the Grimleal could use. She spent even longer as Validar's strongest servant. Only in the end did she turn away from that cause. And she did it by siding with Ylissean-born Shepherds and chasing her personal vendetta against every crime the Grimleal committed against _ her. _ The good of her homeland meant nothing in comparison.

Aversa might have been the single most hated person in the country.

"Oh, gods, please leave us in peace!" wailed a shopkeep as he groveled amid his wares. His daughter had kicked a toy so that it crossed the deserted street and Aversa's path, catching her attention.

The child in question was wide-eyed with terror. Everyone who still lived knew the face of the woman who once accompanied Validar on his jaunts across the country, searching villages for maidens to sacrifice to the Fell Dragon. Her tattoos were hard to miss, even half-covered by more rustic clothing, and Aversa _ knew _ there were still stories circulating rural Plegia of a witch that snatched children in the night.

She just…forgot.

No one she'd hurt would ever forget _her._

Aversa slammed her coins down on the counter, making both father and daughter cringe. She wrapped her purchased vegetables in checkered cloth, then turned on her heel and marched back into the street.

Those peasants she saw cowered as she passed. She was too dangerous to reject outright, but they hated and feared her. So what if she was born in this tiny village?

_ I am not one of them any longer. _

The people here thought no doubt thought the girl she'd been had died alongside her family. The Grimleal were nothing if not thorough about recruiting. Nothing of the person she once was remained now. Since the day Validar happened upon this village and picked a girl—not Aversa, not yet—as his new pawn, it knew no peace.

Some ten years after that massacre, the second white-haired child born to their people killed a dozen villagers in a magical rampage. Had the Plegian army not snatched him up, taking the problem somewhere else, Aversa suspected the inhabitants of this sleepy little town would have torn the boy to shreds in a mob. If they ever plucked up the courage, at any rate. Their fear of dark magic was well-earned.

_ I should never have come back. _

Aversa should have disappeared into the annals of history entirely, exactly how she expected that both of her counterparts among the Shepherds wanted. Choosing Ylissean spouses, however, kept them tethered. The other Shepherds mostly settled in the same country, their invisible ties keeping their fates intertwined.

They were loved.

Aversa was one of the few to deliberately sever those bonds. She was…likely poorer for it.

It was with this thought rattling in her head like shattered teeth, knocked loose by an unexpected blow, that she spent her lonely days.

People did not visit the resident witch. "Visit" implied that her callers wanted anything from her other than their lives to continue. Aversa's very presence was akin to a death threat to the villagers. None of them knocked. They left their offerings on her doorstep and fled into the morning mist before she rose for the day. They treated her like _ Grima _in human form.

The year since the end of the war was not one Aversa would recall fondly later.

"Do you think we have the right place?" asked a man's voice from outside.

Aversa paused, hesitating to open the window shutters on that side of the hut. Visitors never let themselves be heard. Gray light streamed through the class and dusty curtains on her bed, visible even from her vantage point overlooking the field.

"That's her pegasus in the field," said a woman—younger, brighter. "Don't worry, Father."

Someone who _ knew _ her.

"Aversa? Aversa, are you in there?" the man called again.

It took surprisingly long for recognition to stir in the depths of her mind. Maybe Aversa ought to have spent more of the last year actually talking to people. Once the mental fog—exhaustion, irritation, depression—cleared somewhat, she remembered the names of her soon-to-be guests.

The thought had her swinging the door open before finding her hairbrush, donning a dressing robe, or even fully processing what was racing through her mind.

"Hi!" said Morgan. Aversa regarded her blankly until her face fell. Discouraged, the girl said, "Good…morning?"

The girl was still just as short a year after Aversa last saw her, green hair at chin-length and big brown eyes just as doe-like as ever. She even still wore the black-and-purple coat bearing the Mark of Grima, unaware of the implications this far into Plegian territory. In fact, if Aversa didn't already know the girl was half-manakete, she'd assume she was just frozen in time.

"Good morning," Aversa replied eventually, while her mind tried to pick apart any and all subtle undertones in that expression. It was a pointless endeavor; aside from tactical games and the occasional prank, Morgan was almost terminally straightforward.

From behind his daughter, Robin cleared his throat.

Robin was…also exactly as Aversa left him. Certainly less hollow-cheeked and a little less covered in grass stains or spilled alcohol and confetti, but not noticeably warped by the loss of his connection to Grima. His hair was still undyed white, but long enough to tie back properly now, and he looked like he'd been getting enough time in the sun so that his Plegian heritage was actually shining through. He looked healthier than she did, at least.

Going by the black wyverns inspecting the scrub near Aversa's little homestead, they'd just arrived from Ylisse. Perhaps even Ylisstol, given the undoubtedly comfortable positions the Shepherds and _ especially _ Robin had long since earned. The only true question that remained was if they'd fully rebuilt after the previous war.

It wasn't as though Aversa made any effort to keep up to date.

"What brings you here?" Aversa asked, like that awkward pause didn't just happen. She straightened her back as though awaiting an army inspection, able to look Robin in the eye without craning her neck.

Aversa saw the moment any and all excuses fled Robin's head. A pity; his wit was one of his better traits, even when considering his tactical prowess. Thus bereft, he said instead, "It's more than a year since we last saw you."

"And I imagine longer still since you have spoken to the Chon'sin princess," Aversa countered, leaning against the doorframe to her little cabin with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Say'ri writes," Robin said. "You haven't." He let the implication hang in the air long enough that Aversa's refusal to acknowledge it felt awkward. Then he sighed. "I understand if you don't want to see either of us, but…"

"Oh, come inside already." It was the first invitation Aversa had extended to anyone in…a very long time. Even if it was backhanded, she watched both of them perk up a little as they ignored her tone and focused on the words instead. Baffling. "I might as well deal with you _ after _ having breakfast."

Morgan cheered like Aversa offered to cook for them.

She might as well have, she supposed. Aversa bowed to their wishes with only a token protest. It didn't mean anything when all of the Shepherds knew, as much as they might've tried to pretend to have gone temporarily deaf, that Aversa swore her undying loyalty to Robin shortly after joining them. That neither leveraged it against her now was just how the Shepherds operated.

"Your house is tiny," said Morgan, after snooping around the place. "Lissa said you left with only two saddlebags' worth of belongings, and she wasn't wrong, was she?"

She wasn't wrong. Originally, Aversa erected her little hut half with magic and half with the memories of a childhood cut short. It was one of the small mercies of entering the Grimleal when she did; unlike others, she remembered a life before Validar. Aversa's past as a simple village girl included more knowledge of animal husbandry, barn-raising, and housework than the Grimleal ever found useful. While Aversa was out of practice when she arrived here, the muscle memory remained.

It filled her days, as much as anything did.

"I wanted to try my hand at a simpler life," Aversa told her, setting last night's stew on the hearth. Using curses to preserve food was second nature by now, so she only needed to light a fire for breakfast to be on its way. Casting the reheating curse with a flick of her fingers, Aversa busied herself with opening the remaining windows while her guests explored.

Even if her only real companion is a war steed, Sombra was alive and depended on her. That was enough. Barring a lack of friendly company that could actually talk back for the last year or so, she was self-sufficient.

It said something about the trajectory of her life that Aversa didn't know which god's name to take in vain when she cursed how pathetic her own thoughts sounded. Grima's death took him out of her reach even for insults. Naga? Aversa knew so little of her that it was laughable. No, she was the kind of fool who willingly cut good people out of her life to chase a sense of nostalgia. Now she was…this.

The weight of expectations balanced differently now. She didn't have to maintain her long nails or her hair or even get dressed on most days, because there wasn't anyone to see her.

She sort of wished she'd maintained a higher standard, but Robin once ordered her pegasus shot out from under her. She'd once summoned Risen to kill everyone he loved. They likely didn't view the world the same way.

"It has been an experience," Aversa said, when neither of her guests spoke. She noted how Morgan practically vibrated with the urge to fill silence, but that was her nature. "Not one I think I'll repeat after this year. The life of a hermit bores me."

Robin seized on the implied change of topic. "Do you plan to leave Plegia?"

There was a look in his brown eyes that reminded Aversa of the war—a deep-set focus. Strange to see it pointed at her, especially once they finally had each other's true measure.

Aversa pretended not to notice that and took his question seriously. After some thought, she said, "If this year has taught me anything, it is how thoroughly and thoughtlessly I've burnt every bridge I once crossed." She sat at the table, across from the man she once called—however facetiously—her brother. "The people I once cared for treat me like a dread god in need of appeasing. It was too much to think they might forget my crimes."

There was nothing to do with their hands. Aversa did not borrow or steal a tea set before leaving the Shepherds, and her home village was too small to have a market for luxuries. No snacks sat at her lone table for guests. She felt the hot shame of her inadequacy as a host keenly, despite the excuses piled up behind her teeth.

There was no need to keep up appearances. There was _ no one _ to perform for.

Robin frowned. "None of what happened was your fault. Even Chrom forgave you." _ "Despite what your actions cost him" _ went unsaid, but not unheard.

"He didn't," Aversa said. She looked down at her once-beautiful hands, cracked by lack of care over the previous months. What _ happened _ to her? "Chrom _ decided _ I'd been led astray by Validar and thus had no choice. Just a spellbound victim with no real control over her life. He always blamed King Gangrel for Queen Emmeryn's death, regardless."

"You're the one who _ told _ us you were twisted into what Validar wanted you to be," said Morgan, nonplussed. Her big brown eyes held a question Aversa didn't want to answer.

Morgan only knew Aversa's cruelty from a distance. She'd joined the Shepherds during the war against Walhart instead of Gangrel, but she'd also seen Aversa's descent into murderous, futile rage after Validar's death. She'd seen her father order an archer to shoot Aversa down before she could do any more damage to the Shepherds than she already had.

It wasn't the sort of encounter that allowed both sides to stop and exchange pleasantries. It was also a very poor first impression.

And Morgan wasn't a dark mage, despite having the potential. She didn't intuit curses the same way, nor did she have the knack for creative cruelty that helped shape the strongest of them. Occasional thoughtlessness hardly counted.

"If that were true, killing Validar would have ended it," Aversa corrected, gentler than was her habit. Though really, she hadn't held a conversation with another person in so long that even she hardly cared what her habits were. "But I behaved…poorly."

"Aversa," Robin said, as Morgan scrutinized her, "I don't mean to downplay what happened. But don't you think your choice to fight against Grima counts for anything?"

"I thought it would help bury my past," Aversa said, "and it didn't."

Robin considered that line of reasoning. Then he reached across the table, taking her hand like the little Ylissean princess did once upon a time.

She still couldn't understand how these people, wronged so many times over by her, by Gangrel, and by Validar, could stand her presence. Despite her talks with Robin during the war, her only real bond didn't fill the chasm she'd carved for herself. She was so _ close _ to finding a niche before they slew Grima in what felt like no time at all, and it was all she could do not to drift away like some unwelcome cloud in a sunny sky.

Aversa's shoulders bent with the weight of living. Her hair fell forward and covered her face. "I have my freedom. I…I shouldn't be like this."

"No one's at their best when they're alone, Aversa," Robin said to the top of her bowed head, solemn.

"And being an adult doesn't make you immune to stabbing yourself in the foot," Morgan said.

Robin, who squeezed Aversa's hands hard enough that bones creak, was in the middle of shooting his time-traveling daughter a disapproving look when Aversa glanced toward them. _ "Morgan." _

Naga truly blessed the Shepherds. Time-traveling children, moving around in the past in an attempt to save their parents' world from Grima. And instead of such kindnesses, Grima gave his people the dreaded Hierophant and nearly led the world to utter destruction.

"She's sabotaging herself and both of us know it!" Morgan protested.

Aversa retained enough self-awareness to recognize an unpleasant truth by now. She'd built her life here out of them, brick by brick. She kept her mouth shut as she scrubbed at her face with her free hand. Obliterating any evidence of potential tears was her first priority.

"That wasn't why we came here," Robin reminded Morgan, with the sort of tone that implied this happened often.

Or had happened often. Aversa still felt too much like an interloper with the Shepherds to reliably track Robin's interactions with his family.

Which was hilarious, given how much stock Aversa once placed in gathering information and how Robin similarly admitted to (benevolently!) spying on her slow progress toward caring for the gaggle of Ylisseans. It was as though genuine curiosity had been burned out of her the day she'd uncovered the truth of Validar's actions.

Robin was still talking. Aversa's gaze snapped to meet his, pretending to have paid attention the entire time.

"—which is why I wanted to ask you for help," Robin finished, a hopeful gleam in his eyes. "You're the only one who can."

For the love of the gods, Aversa wished coffee meaningfully affected her. And that she had some lying around to brew. "I'm...sorry?" She shook her head more to sell the act than out of a need to clear it. "I must be more tired than I thought. What were you saying?"

"We want to go digging in old Grimleal records to find out about Father's past!" Morgan said, before her father could even try.

Aversa fixed Robin with a narrow-eyed look at those words. "What was that about 'I came into this world without friends or family, but now I have both'?"

Robin squeezed her hand again. "That doesn't mean I'm not curious. And… I…" Robin trailed off, suddenly hesitant. "You don't feel like you can rely on all the bonds we forged during the war, do you?"

Aversa's gaze swept the room, then returned to give Robin a pointed glare. _ Yes, _ thank you, she understood how her isolation made her miserable. It had little to do with _ her. _ She just…needed to find someplace where she felt less like an outsider. The Shepherds' joy was too stifling.

It didn't take a master tactician to know she'd spectacularly failed to achieve her objective.

"Any records dating back to your childhood would be in Plegia Castle, if they exist at all," Aversa said finally. She didn't pull her hand away. She _ did _raise her eyebrows when Morgan joined in, though, placing her hand atop theirs. "Mas—Validar had them relocated after he ascended to the throne. Unless looters have stripped the place to the stone foundations, they should still be there."

Robin opened his mouth to say something.

"You don't need me to find them." Aversa slid out of Robin and Morgan's grasp and checked breakfast, pronouncing the entire affair ready to eat after only a brief inspection. She didn't have many bowls—hardly needed them—but improvised using wooden mugs and spoons. "And breakfast is served."

If there was anything that could still drive the stake of inadequacy deeper, it was the cavalcade of little failures. She could not even serve guests when she had any.

Luckily, the presence of food distracted Morgan's blunter inquiries. As a half-manakete, she spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fill her stomach. Aversa only briefly wondered if the girl transformed too often recently, then brushed the question away as too invasive.

"You're the only person left who spent much time in the place," Robin said, while Morgan started on her second serving of stew. In less than one minute. "If I tried to search on my own, I'd be thrown out of the country on my ear before I could find anything."

"I wasn't the librarian," Aversa pointed out. "And even if I was, again, you don't _ need _ me. Seek the guidance of whatever asinine petty king now rules Plegia."

Robin's brows knit together and he gripped his mug tighter. "It's been a year."

"So it has," Aversa replied.

"Aversa, there _ is _ no central authority." He looked pained. "Plegia hasn't had a king since Validar."

The realization gave Aversa pause. In this village, almost no news reached her ears. At the time, this seemed like the greatest gift she could ask for. She wanted nothing to do with the world that had destroyed her childhood. The people here traveled rarely, and usually only to the next village. Nothing changed.

The old Exalt of Ylisse invaded Plegia seventeen years ago. He failed in his primary goal of eliminating the Grimleal. He failed to even keep his own army alive and cohesive long enough to stop their degeneration into ruthlessness when time, the desert, and the insurgency of Plegian irregulars cut down the majority of their leaders. In the end, even he lost his life and left the throne to a nine-year-old girl.

Where he did succeed, however, was in killing every legitimate member of the Plegian royal family when the walls of Plegia Castle buckled under the weight of the attackers. He succeeded in sowing misery across two nations and starting the newest round of generation-spanning conflict. He succeeded in killing thousands on both sides.

King Gangrel's ascent to the throne, then, had depended on the Grimleal. They were his most consistent support before military might gave him a properly loyal core of his own. He whipped up the populace, with the Grimleal's backing, and eventually brought about a Plegian invasion of Ylisse.

And so did everything burn.

Finally, she said, "Plegia has been dying since the old Exalt's war. Gangrel and Validar just hastened it." It wasn't Aversa's problem. Not since she'd burned her past in Grima's sacrificial pyre. "Most of the nobility left by the end of Validar's reign were Grimleal. The Awakening killed them all. And you think I care any more than I did then?"

"And all of Ylisse faces a crisis if no one can manage an entire country." Robin briefly let his gaze sink to the tabletop, then took a deep breath to steady himself. "They're trying to assemble some kind of council, but no one can agree on who will lead it. Or at least that's as much as I've gathered between the rounds of shouting."

"This still doesn't explain why you'd rather search for family history instead of forcing Plegia to get its act together." She sighed as realization struck. "Unless this is just a front to search the kingdom's tax records for some idea of where to start." Aversa rested her chin on her hand.

"Can't it be both?" Robin countered, but gently.

"You don't need to leverage favors from me. As long as you don't dare put my name forward for ruling this or that, I'll help you. Overachiever," Aversa muttered the last part under her breath. Her stomach turned sour at the thought of most things these days, but even she had to admit that traveling _ anywhere _ sounded better than staying here to quietly rot in a past that couldn't and wouldn't accept her back.

"Maybe. I've been called worse," Robin said mildly. Once again, he focused all his attention on her. "Aversa, come back to us. I'd—I hate seeing you like this."

"You could always leave and spare your eyes," Aversa told him, but there was no real bite behind it. She drummed her nails on the rough-hewn table. Then, "How much of this is about Plegia, and how much is about me?"

Aversa was gratified when Robin didn't stumble over his answer: "I just want to see my friends happy."

He was no different than he'd been during the war. Dissolved like a sugar cube in tea, back again, and he'd changed not at all. And once again, Robin made time for people.

Morgan's gaze darted between them, though she avoided breaking the silence only because of the stew still in front of her.

"This is why you ought to stick to battle strategy and leave the politics to someone with a head for it," Aversa said finally, faintly embarrassed. Then she settled into breakfast without another word.

That was the last they said on the topic for the next hour.

* * *

If Aversa had to build a strike team of some sort, the Shepherds had enough decent soldiers on their core roster to be almost spoiled for choice. For raiding Plegia Castle in particular, she would've chosen the other two dark mages. The target location was riddled with traps that only a practitioner could really control, and Aversa preferred more preparation to less.

The main downside? Aversa trusted their skills, not them. Not quite far enough.

Robin apparently agreed with her logic, but not her mistrust.

Aversa didn't know why she expected any different.

There _ was _ a team for raiding Plegia Castle. Robin had organized them before even contacting Aversa, with the expectation that she brought their numbers up to seven. With her cooperation secured, the others appeared from the woodwork and arrived at her quaint home by late morning.

Aversa _ knew _ letting Morgan out of her sight would lead to shenanigans.

There was not a single clanking suit of armor in sight, except for what mail Robin's travel wyvern wore. Instead, the group comprised both of the Shepherds' Plegian dark mages—Henry and Tharja—as well as their spouses, exactly as Aversa preferred. The choice also dragged the Ylissean thief Gaius into their fold, complete with his candy collection. Which was fine. The man was competent.

Princess Lissa was _ loud. _ As subtle as a brick to the head. Even her husband's cackling didn't draw as much attention. It was one of those traits that once made directing assassination attempts so much more convenient back when Aversa organized…things like that.

Aversa didn't voice the second thought.

"You didn't need to give Princess a look like that," said Gaius, after the group briefly split to scout the area around Aversa's…home. He leaned on the fencepost near the paddock housing Heath (the name of Robin's wyvern), Travant (Morgan's), and Sombra, to each creature's visible discomfort. "She knows what she's doing."

Aversa looked at him sidelong. She didn't know how he could still manage to store so many confections on his person, but he'd have to go without replacements while in Plegia. Harvests hadn't improved over the last year.

Participating in this mission seemed to be a question of volunteers. And of Princess Lissa deciding there was no way in Naga's light that her husband would be allowed to depart on a potentially hazardous journey without her.

Finally, Aversa said, "She is welcome to join us. I couldn't stop her if I tried."

Gaius smiled around the stick of his latest lollipop, if halfheartedly. "No, you really couldn't."

Gaius and Aversa had spoken maybe a handful of times in their entire lives. One of them was a threat over stolen desserts. So, when the thief nodded in something like approval at the end of this stilted conversation, Aversa left him looking out over the field.

She pushed back from the paddock fence—for what little that meant when both occupants could fly—and decided there was no point worrying. Three dark mages, a thief, and two tacticians. This was no balanced team, but they weren't planning on fighting the thrice-destroyed remnants of the Plegian army. Hardly any living people stood between Aversa's hut and the capital.

It just took organization. And time.

The others explored the little scrap of cliff-riddled woodland Aversa claimed for her own. Curiosity might not have been a common vice of the Shepherds as a whole, but the ones who assembled here were less likely to search for threats and more likely to try and find frogs.

By the time the first of them besides Gaius came back, Aversa was busy laying out Sombra's tack for the miniature campaign. She kicked the leather and jingling chain-links into order with the toes of her riding boots, then jerked a hand to hex knots out of the parts that refused her more lackadaisical orders. She didn't bother asking for the whereabouts of the others, focusing on her tasks while Gaius started to hum.

This far into the mountain pine forests, the main threats were rare fell beasts and occasional bandits, but both knew better than to approach Aversa's domain.

The ones who didn't learn became object lessons.

"It's so weird to be back here after all this time," said Henry, when he arrived back from what was less a patrol and more a leisurely stroll. He stood over Aversa's completed preparations for Sombra, rocking back and forth on his heels.

In the year since Aversa saw him last, he'd finally hit his growth spurt properly. He looked less like a willowy boy and more like a young man, with broader shoulders and faint, pale whiskers that indicated he needed to shave now. Wearing mage robes that combined the more travel-appropriate Ylissean breeches and boots and a Plegian cloak ensemble over the top, he almost looked respectable.

"How so?" Aversa asked, after setting her work on Sombra's leather breastplate aside. "I thought the Shepherds never passed this far into the mountains."

"Oh, this was _ way _ before I met anybody from Ylisse. I was still a kid," Henry told her. He'd picked up on whatever carousing song Gaius was humming and bobbed in time with the thief's half-muffled voice. His smile never dropped. "I think I was born a little…that way! Down the mountain and in that little village. The one with the windmill that looks like a half-melted face!"

Aversa looked up from Sombra's halter. Incredulous, she asked without thinking, "You were born _ here?" _

"I was! I didn't know for sure until I took a walk around your house, though." Henry made a looping gesture at the side of his head. "Little fuzzy up here, but I remember most of the trees. They even welcomed me back!"

Aversa spent a few seconds trying to find the right words.

She didn't know Henry well, because they lived two very different lives before the war against Grima. She was Validar's right hand and rarely left his side until instructed to manipulate Gangrel. As the nearest thing Gangrel had to a queen, she looked _ down _ at all she surveyed. She'd never once suspected a connection to anyone else among the Shepherds.

Henry, meanwhile, was a mage assigned to General Mustafa's ranks until the man's untimely death. He then spent the remainder of the first phase of the war lashing out in boredom against his own comrades until subdued. Until his defection to Ylisse, Aversa heard nothing more of the boy who couldn't be controlled except through force. And afterward, Aversa had no interest in pursuing friendship with the only two defectors from the Plegian army.

And now _ this _ information was being dragged up, like dead mice presented by a professional barn cat.

The Shepherds were always the _ best _ at giving her headaches without casting a single curse.

"Did I say something wrong?" Henry asked, in the face of her silence. His smile didn't shift noticeably, but his tone was less cheerful. When she heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose, he added, "Unless you're just not used to talking to people anymore. That happens sometimes. The trees around here sure think you don't talk to _ them _ enough."

_ This boy, _ Aversa noted dryly, _ has an easier time speaking of "people" than "humans." _ She supposed it made sense. The Shepherds were the most multi-species army anyone heard of. But what she said instead was, "You have a unique perspective on their worries. Tell me, how long as it been since you were last in the village?"

"About…twelve years? The trees sleep through all the snowy days, and I wasn't keeping track back then," Henry said, with only the briefest doubt. She didn't know what consulting plants entailed, but she supposed that she couldn't judge. "Anyway, the villagers had me dragged away in chains around midsummer that year, so I haven't been back."

"I…see." She didn't. She was already an initiate among the Grimleal by then.

"Why'd you settle here, anyway? There's nothing around for miles and miles," Henry said, unbothered by Aversa's lukewarm response. "Ylisstol is a lot less boring. And there are more Shepherds there! We see them all the time."

"Given your wife's rank, I imagine so," Aversa said. She headed back into her storeroom and dug out Sombra's saddle, inspecting it for signs of decay in the sunlight.

"Oh, Lissa said she's abdicating once the littler Lucina can run," Henry said, as though this revelation meant nothing. To him, it probably didn't. "Between the older Lucina and Cynthia, and the younger two, I guess there's enough kids running around now. And it's really more about being around friends."

"Your point is made," Aversa told him, unsure of what else to say in response. The Ylissean succession wasn't ultimately her problem.

"I had a point? I thought we were just talking," Henry said, sounding mildly puzzled. When Aversa shot an inquiring look over her shoulder, his dark purple eyes were in clear view for once. "Say, you didn't answer my question." He rocked on his feet while Aversa set the halter on a hitch for later consideration. "Why did you decide to live here?"

Aversa sighed. "This is where I was born. It—"

"Wow, really?" To Aversa's surprise, he perked up again. "If you'd been on that street when they killed my wolf friend, I might've met you way earlier!" He didn't pat her shoulder or anything, but the thought of sharing a hometown seemed to chase the minor melancholy away. "And you'd be in at least six pieces if you couldn't get out of the way fast enough, but that's all in the past."

"I doubt I'd have been good company even in one piece. At the time, I was quite the…character." _ To put it kindly. _

"Aww, I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed. But I guess you know you best!" Henry shrugged, then wandered off to go bother Gaius about something or other. Maybe to sing. Or perhaps to talk to the mounts.

Aversa wished she could do something with the pit in her stomach, but instead gritted her teeth and got back to work.

In relatively short order, she had Sombra fully equipped for the journey to Plegia Castle. While many pegasi were skittish around men, and even more startled at the first blast of magic over their wings, Sombra didn't even shift as Aversa half-dressed him for his battlefield return with hexes alone. It saved time and other people's fingers.

"No biting," Aversa murmured to her mount.

Sombra nickered, ears briefly turning to track her voice.

It was as good as she was going to get.

The next part of the group trickled back into the clearing. Robin and Tharja appeared first.

Aversa didn't especially care if Tharja grew out of her Robin obsession unless it interfered more substantially than by just being annoying. If she had to, she could hex people as well or better than either of the other dark mages among the Shepherds. Giving Tharja a pounding headache unless she stayed away from Robin was well within Aversa's abilities.

But perhaps that was unnecessary, like most of Aversa's stored violence.

"What took you?" Gaius called, once he noticed the pair. He lifted an arm to greet them, but didn't seem that concerned.

"It turns out this is Henry's hometown," Robin said once he was close enough not to shout. His brow furrowed. "We took a look around."

"Really, Junior? And you didn't mention it to me?" Gaius says, turning his attention to where the youngest dark mage of their group was still chattering to the wyvern.

"It didn't seem important." Henry shrugged, clasping his hands behind his back. Then he smiled. "I told Aversa just a second ago and she didn't react, so it's probably not a big deal."

Robin grimaced, but he glanced at Aversa to confirm what Henry said.

Aversa shook her head ever-so-slightly. She was just more proficient at hiding her thoughts than Henry was at perceiving human emotions, even now.

Tharja noticed the exchange, but visibly decided against saying anything, then walked right past them to stand near Gaius as though her stalking tendencies _ had _ become milder over time. During the war, anyone more observant than Chrom or Donnel noticed the one-sided infatuation.

Gaius lifted one arm as he turned toward the paddock, sweeping her against his side. Going by the lack of flying sparks, Tharja tolerated everything perfectly well. Robin told Aversa once, while perhaps a little drunk, that he was surprised Tharja ever married.

_ Not my business, _ Aversa reminded herself as she shoved all unnecessary belts, straps, and buckles back into her storeroom. She had better things to do than speculate over other people's love lives.

Princess Lissa and Morgan arrived together, a few minutes after Robin started adjusting Heath's armor. While the wyvern's wedge-shaped head bobbed to and fro and everyone else talked, that left Aversa as the only person who could greet them.

Perhaps court manners weren't as forgotten as Aversa half-hoped on some days.

Princess Lissa had been an awkward girl when Aversa first saw her, not even of age and coddled endlessly by her siblings and the troubadour Maribelle. Spoiled, but still generally sweet-natured and not used to the horrific toll of war. In the year since Aversa left Ylisse, she'd gotten no taller, but carried herself more like a confident adult than a gawky prankster.

Still wore the button-adorned hat.

"It's great to see you again," said Princess Lissa, neatly beating Aversa to the punch. "It's been a really long time, hasn't it?"

"I suppose it has," Aversa said, wrong-footed by the genuine sentimentality. Forcing her thoughts back in order, she said, "Was there anything interesting on your walk?"

"Not after we sent Henry back first," said Morgan, scuffing a boot in the dirt.

Princess Lissa shot her a look. "Yeah, well, not everyone in town is exactly friendly. We didn't explain who we were, though, so don't worry about that."

Aversa found herself laughing. So her hometown's fear and suspicion _ weren't _ just directed at her. Good to know that they could at least identify strangers. "Oh, I wasn't."

Both younger women gave her baffled looks.

"The place is not worth your time. Never was." Aversa cleared her throat, sweeping an arm back to beckon them forward. "So, let's not waste worry there. We have places to be, don't we?"

"Right," said Morgan, determined now. She jogged ahead, rushing to help her father with wyvern business.

Aversa watched her go, then turned to Princess Lissa. "It bothers you, doesn't it? How they reacted to him."

Princess Lissa sighed. "A little." Her fingers curled around the length of her healing staff, knuckles whitening. "I mean, more than it bothered him. If I didn't know him so well, I don't think I would've noticed he was upset at all." Her shoulders squared. "What happened here wasn't fair. To anyone."

Aversa definitely hadn't seen signs of any anger from Henry, but she also didn't know him that well. What she knew was enough to make her say, "Then at least take comfort in how neither of you ever, ever have to come back."

Princess Lissa tilted her head back to get a better look at Aversa's face. Whatever she saw in the forced smirk and the clear disdain, it made her say, "Then I won't. And you won't either."

Aversa nodded, like she had real intentions of listening, and they rejoined the group.

By this point, Robin finished with the wyvern-wrangling. He slid to the ground from Heath's flank, dusted himself off, and said to the group at large, "Since we're all here now, it's about time to start thinking about how to break into a castle."

Which none of them had seen in ages.

_ Well, _ Aversa thought, _ not the worst way to start a journey. _

* * *

The trip to Plegia Castle was not a particularly long one, by the standards of armies. A small force without large supply lines fared somewhat better in Plegia's desert lowland terrain, and having three native guides helping them follow a river down to the city worked out well.

At least shuffling people around on the three mounts had been easy enough. Only Sombra was really picky about who rode pillion with Aversa, and Princess Lissa had enough experience on a pegasus to avoid causing trouble.

Three days later, the seven-person group stood on a hill overlooking the burned-out husk of the capitol—abandoned twice over—observing the landscape. The combination of mass death at the nearby Dragon's Table, the damage inflicted thrice in twenty years by Ylissean armies, and the pervasive corruption of two successive kings finally drove most living souls from the city. The last Aversa recalled, only those whose greed outpaced their sense still made expeditions into a place infested with leftover Risen. Everyone else fled for the port cities if they survived the chaos.

"Definitely not the prettiest castle I've ever robbed," said Gaius, briefly removing his lollipop to gesture at the ruins below with it.

The land was gray and desolate, even so long after the most recent devastation. Blackened skeletons of trees, the bones of Grima one incarnation ago, and barren sands dominated the landscape. In the low sweep of the river's path, Plegia Castle surveyed the vast graveyard of its people without pity.

"That was _ ours, _ Gaius," Princess Lissa said, with just a touch of reproach.

"Nah, that doesn't count. I turned my cloak before anyone got into the vault." Gaius shrugged off the friendly punch this earned him, sticking two gumdrops in his mouth before returning to scanning the area.

"It almost doesn't look like the place where I met the Shepherds," Tharja remarked, from his other side. She leaned forward, peering at the castle walls as though seeing through them to the courtyard within. "How time flies."

Aversa watched Princess Lissa and Robin both wince at the reminder and decided nothing she could say regarding the events in this place would be helpful. Apologizing for the scheme to murder Emmeryn, now, was well beyond "too late." Instead, she said, "The Risen here are completely disorganized after Grima's demise. Expect chiefs, not generals."

"Still sounds like a pain. Though there aren't as many Risen in Ylisse as there were during the war, either," Tharja said, surveying the landscape with some distaste. They couldn't see the masses of Risen from their vantage, but no one was eager to go and find out exactly what hid behind the broken buildings. "Grima really was the key, wasn't he?"

Aversa nodded slowly, feeling as though she was easing her way out onto a frozen lake. "For reference, Risen directed by Grima or his servants have red eyes. All others are feral." She ran a nail—no longer unforgivably ragged and unseemly—along the cover of her Ruin tome. "The worst enemies will be humans still searching for treasure. Risen flail wildly, but tomb-robbers can _ plan." _

Though now that she thought of it, only the lowest of Risen resorted to teeth and claws. Most of the others could use weapons.

"Well, it's a good thing we're so good at killing things," Henry said. He turned his smile on Princess Lissa, then added, "And putting ourselves back together."

Princess Lissa patted his arm. "Thanks for the compliment."

"Speak for yourself, Junior. I was a burglar and bandit, not a dark mage," said Gaius.

"Oh, right."

Sombra nibbled unhappily at his bit. Nearby, Heath and Travant swung their heads around as though their stubby wyvern ears picked up sounds the people around them couldn't. Right now, all Aversa heard was howling wind.

Risen didn't make much noise until they attacked.

"Given the timing, Validar could not personally seal the records hall before his death," Aversa continued, while the cadence of delivering a report flowed through her words. "But in case others did, try to stick to at least one of the dark mages. Plegia Castle has plenty of powerful curses even without special reinforcement."

"Do you have any idea what they do?" asks Princess Lissa. Her healing staff was accompanied by either a tome or a Bolt Axe most of the time, and today was no exception. Her eyes darted from Aversa's serious expression to the castle in the distance.

"The first screwup with a Plegian vault usually costs a hand, thanks to all the curses," said Henry in a bright tone. "We might carve some spares off Risen as we go. Many hands make light work and all that!" He snickered to himself.

It said something about the company Aversa kept that this comment passed without more than a small sigh from Princess Lissa. Then again, Tharja was a fellow dark mage who even hexed her comrades during the war, Gaius was a pragmatist, Morgan's head was full of tactics, butterflies, and rock candy, and Robin spent most of what life he remembered corralling these fools. Once more, Aversa had to admit Robin chose his troops well.

No one else would tolerate hiking so far into Plegia to chase paperwork.

"I'll take a look around," Gaius said eventually, tucking the remaining candy into its various hiding places. "Sunshine, you coming with? It'll be a nice, quiet walk past the looming jaws of death."

Tharja's took Gaius's outstretched hand, smiling indulgently. "I'll make the best of it." That she only did so after shooting a venomous glare in Aversa's direction was mere window dressing.

With a swirl of their paired traveling cloaks, they were gone down the hill.

"We should probably go with them," Princess Lissa said, after a pause.

"I mean, _ I _ like them enough that I'd be upset if they got eaten by Risen, so probably!" Henry accepted the offer to loop his arm with hers, and the two of them followed the other pair and neatly crashed their…

"Date" didn't really fit, but Aversa supposed there was time for better words.

"She doesn't like me very much, does she?" Aversa remarked to Robin, once all of them were out of earshot. Morgan lurked, but had clambered down the hill in the opposite direction and started kicking over most of the dead bushes nearby. Far enough. "Tharja, I mean."

Princess Lissa was kind to entirely too many people.

Robin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Tharja thinks you're going to kill me someday."

Aversa considered her available repertoire of responses, decided against insulting Tharja out of reflex, and said, "We both know that won't happen." _ Then again… _ "Though I make no guarantees that the Risen will be as tolerant of our presence."

"Wouldn't expect you to," Robin said, despite knowing perfectly well that Aversa once could have done just that.

In truth, it was harder to _ keep _ Risen from killing than it was to just set them loose on defenseless targets. Perhaps she'd share that someday.

Eventually, Aversa said, "Robin?"

"What is it?" he replied, likely already distracted by running mathematical equations in his head. He stood with his back to the dingy sunlight, white hair almost as bright as Aversa's own despite the differing styles.

"Where is Tiki? This looks like a family affair if there ever was one," Aversa said, bringing her hand to her face thoughtfully. Not biting her nails, though—that was Tharja's strange quirk.

Sombra nosed her fingers curiously. With her nails shortened, he approved more of her affection over the last few months. His deep, dark eyes focused as well as they could on her face when he turned his head. He lipped at her palm, nostrils flaring, before letting her go on petting his face.

Robin took long enough to come up with an answer that Aversa actually looked solidly in his direction. When she did, his expression was best described as "conflicted."

"Do I need to answer that now?" he asked, at last.

Aversa pursed her lips briefly. "That depends. Is it something that might be an actual issue? Or is this some insecurity left unspoken?"

"It'll keep. I'll tell you when this is over," Robin said. His gaze darted to Sombra, rather than trying to stare Aversa down with any intent.

"Spoken like a man found dead by the play's second act," Aversa told him.

This drew a dry chuckle, half-hidden as a cough.

Curiosity stirred from its long slumber. Going by the faint smile on Robin's face, Aversa wasn't going to get an answer without asking directly. "If nothing else, I'll be less likely to question your logic for the next hour or so. _ If _ you tell me."

Direct speech was so rarely Aversa's way.

"If it only buys me an hour, I'll keep my silence. It might be more fun that way." Robin shook his head slowly, but the smile that stayed when he stopped seemed more settled, somehow. Like hearing Aversa snipe back at him, much like she used to, was somehow reassuring. "Tiki's absence won't affect our work here."

"Of course," Aversa said, subsiding.

"Good enough for now." Robin sighed again, turning his attention to the green head of hair trotting to and fro up the hill. Once she was finally within speaking distance, he asked, "Morgan, did you see anything?"

"I think I have a path to the castle," Morgan replied, grinning.

Aversa, who knew Morgan primarily as the one who dealt with her amnesia problem through self-inflicted head injuries, didn't say anything to counter the girl's high spirits. If she couldn't even cite her age accurately, she could be argued with by other Ylisseans. Aversa didn't have any interest in puncturing the bright mood before others took a shot first.

Robin, who had led the last two invasions of Plegia and brought the Ylissean army to the capital both times, nodded. "Tell me everything."

"Okay, so the first thing we'll have to do is—"

The air filled with Ylisse-accented chatter, and Aversa tugged Sombra into a brief walk around their clearing, hand on his neck as they went. After a few seconds, she took a deep breath and nearly sneezed when black hairs interfered. Still, she kept the bulk of her attention on her mount to avoid speaking to her almost-niece. After so long with just Sombra for company, it seemed that she now _ couldn't _ turn to others.

Morgan babbled like a brook. By the time Sombra and Aversa concluded their slow loop of the area, the two tacticians finished their reporting and near-argument, leaving empty space in the conversation for other Ylisseans to pop up.

"Sheesh, none of you moved?"

The first of whom was Gaius. As he stalked back up the hill, he shook ash from his traveling cloak. Boots crunched dead plants as he went, clearly showing how much stealth mattered here and now. One hand still rested on his sword, but his bow was safely stowed. There seemed to be no need for a panic.

Well, at least he hadn't seen anything horrifying enough to shock the sarcasm out of him. That was a good sign.

"You had it handled," Robin told him, pretending not to notice the backhanded rebuke. They'd seen more than enough fights to have conversations laden with subtext or something. "And Morgan took a look at the situation from up here."

Probably.

Gaius glanced at Morgan, who looked fit to start cheering. "So what did those dragon eyes see, kid?"

"If we take that high road over there, we should be able to pass most of the ruins of the city," Morgan began, gesturing toward the burned-out buildings below. "The Risen don't seem organized, so using it might keep us from having to fight every one of them in the city before we even reach the castle." She paused, recounting the mounts they'd brought. "Or we could just fly to the castle walls and do all our indoor fighting there, I guess! I just hope that won't lead Risen archers our way."

Kind of a vague plan, but at least Morgan understood principles broader than "dig a massive, badly-disguised pit trap and giggle over its imminent usage." She'd been a bit short of inspiration the last Aversa heard. And at least the Risen didn't seem intensely interested in weapons now.

"Did she do anything?" Tharja demanded, apparently unable to keep being a silent shadow. She sidled up to Robin and stopped just short of grabbing him to begin an inspection, as though Aversa could cause harm without her notice.

She could, but that wasn't the point.

"Once again, no," Robin said, with thinning patience Tharja seemed not to hear.

More likely she did, but Aversa had heard terrible whispers about Tharja's attempts to be "a normal girl." Robin tolerated her honest quirks better than her acting.

"She has good reasons to be suspicious. I did make at least three attempts," Aversa pointed out. In case Robin's amnesia was a little more all-encompassing than he'd ever implied.

"Did I ask your opinion?" Tharja said, glaring at Aversa from under her bangs before Robin could answer on his own merits.

Aversa looked down her nose at the shorter dark mage, drawing herself up to her full height. Not for nothing had Tharja been an army regular, rather than a right hand to the leader of the Grimleal. She was a talented dark mage, but Aversa knew _ her _ strengths as well. Talent without cultivation inevitably hit a limit, sooner than later.

Still, all that passed her lips was a mild, "My apologies. I must have misheard."

Tharja scoffed, but there was no more time for the two of them to get into a spat before the last two stragglers appeared.

Princess Lissa was doing just fine, though she had as much of an extra layer of dust on her skirts as Gaius did. Her axe was unmarked by combat. Her face, however, implied that today was a day for silliness.

Henry had a Risen arm impaled on the end of a rusted sword. It was still twitching.

"I found us a helping hand!" Henry said brightly, as he brought his prize to the middle of the huddled Ylisseans.

They were used to his antics insofar as no one screamed, but it certainly put an end to the discussion in no time flat.

* * *

"Crivens, at least the flight's over," Gaius said, sliding down Heath's back once Robin brought the beast to the ground again. He ran a hand through his hair and readjusted his headband, then added, "That was nerve-wracking."

**"I thought it was pretty fun!" **said Morgan, whose voice echoed with the power of her dragonstone. And also whatever power let her talk without lips to make words. Her spiky, horned head angled toward her father as he also slid off the wyvern, all of her teeth visible in a smile that didn't translate well.

Honestly, for a flying goof and occasional dragon, Morgan was covered from head to tail in feathers, which was quite a change from the other three manaketes found in Robin's company. Tiki had enough feathers to serve as accents to a head topped with massive horns, but her wings were like a bat's and her body featured both a mane and a long strip of fur all the way down her spine. Nowi looked like seaweed that aspired to draconic godhood and mostly succeeded, while Nah was the same but with more pink and less-developed teeth and claws.

Strictly speaking, they hadn't _ needed _ four flying mounts to get a group of seven people to Plegia Castle. Morgan had been doing just fine as Travant's designated master for this trip, dragging Gaius and Tharja along as passengers. Lissa could ride along with Aversa, being decent enough at pegasus-riding if she chose to be, and Henry nearly pestered Robin into being carried in Heath's claws instead of sticking to the saddle like a burr.

Except for the fact that putting three people on a wyvern in full armor was apparently a lot to ask of a flier. Thus, minor re-shuffling.

And Morgan wanted to stretch her wings, apparently.

"Not getting shot at was a real weird change of pace, at least for being around here," said Henry, still clutched to the manakete's chest by her feathered forelimbs. He wiggled out of Morgan's grip, falling the remaining distance to the ground. Avoiding a splat by virtue of a short drop, he added, "Fun, though. You've got a wild wingbeat, Morgan!"

Morgan lifted a black-tipped wing, horned head whipping around to peer at it. **"I do?" **

"Yep!"

Aversa sighed, swinging herself out of Sombra's saddle in time to watch Tharja fail at doing the same with Travant, for fear of getting her robes snagged one or more of the armor spikes. She had to wait until Gaius approached and offered her a hand down. As this was a better option than being pitched to the flagstones, she accepted.

Now that Aversa thought of it, the members of the Shepherds who could reliably control a flying beast were less common than those who wanted to keep their feet firmly on the ground. Odd, considering that Valm reliably produced people who knew their way around wyverns, even if pegasi were a more typically-Ylissean mount. Was the pegasus population of Ylisse still gutted?

Lissa, still on Sombra's back for a better vantage point, said, "Are we going to talk about the corpses still in the middle of the courtyard yet?"

"I was trying not to say anything," said Gaius, looking around with a somewhat pinched expression. "Did we really cut through this many people on our way out? I don't even remember half of these guys."

"I imagine so. And their current state is more than a year old," Aversa told him, even as she nudged one of the corpses with the tip of her boot. "Just be grateful the smell is long gone."

In truth, Aversa hadn't really cared about any of her fellows at the time. During the war, Validar had tried to invite the Ylissean army to their doom. Fresh off the Valmese expedition and putting Walhart down like the warmonger deserved, Robin _ could _ have been exhausted by all the travel. Validar staked the sacred mission of the Grimleal on being able to use the Fire Emblem—now complete—in the Awakening ritual for Grima. To that end, he'd brought much of the remaining Grimleal forces into hidden passages in the capital and tried to murder the Ylisseans during negotiations.

It failed, Algol died, and the chase went on. Even after all of that, Validar and Aversa and the Hierophant had still schemed. Until all relevant parties were cut down, the war went on. There was no time to stop and take a breath with a potential end of the world waiting for them.

"No Risen, at least," Tharja said after a little longer, dismissing whatever fiery scrying spell she'd held in her palm. Still, she headed a bit farther away from the group, calling up a second ball of purple flame. "So far, anyway. I'll take a look."

Morgan's horned head followed her, red eyes shining in the late afternoon light. The sun's rays lit her feathers like a mountaintop beacon.

She was nothing in comparison to the massive skull that dominated half the sand-strewn courtyard. Even looking at the ancient evidence of Grima's existence—a whole dragon's lifetime ago—made the Ylisseans shudder.

With Morgan using the empty-eyed skull as a backdrop, it was hard to miss her bare head's resemblance to the ancient dragon. If not for the fact that Grima had favored scales instead of feathers, Aversa suspected seeing Morgan's dragon form would conjure terrible nightmares for most of the continent.

Speaking of the skull, it had been a fixture for so long that Aversa suspected the castle records kept some commentary on how Plegia Castle itself had managed to corral the dead god's corpse. Even with its low-set horns long since snapped off, it was at least ten times as long as Morgan or either of the wyverns they'd brought. The ribs were miles away, half-buried in the Midmire. When she'd lived in the castle, Aversa sometimes wandered out at night to stare at the god who would soon rise to claim all the world, wondering what terrible force could strike it down and scatter it quite so thoroughly. Then Gangrel would draw her back inside, and Aversa would remember her duty was to manipulate him and leave philosophy to others.

Nowadays, Aversa only vaguely wondered why the Grima's true death didn't leave a _ second _ gigantic corpse to hollow out for a monument.

Robin knelt next to one of the dead men in the skull's shadow, eyes dark. He didn't go as far as to touch the corpse, but a ball of light—hardly even a spell—appeared in his hand to give him a slightly better view. "I remember this one. He almost killed Ricken when we were here."

And so did they cut this one down, too. No one, it appeared, had even tried to remove the dozens of Grimleal corpses in the aftermath.

"Good riddance, then," Aversa said flatly. She peered at another crumpled body, assessing the damage. Given the arrow all the way through his head and piercing the stone behind his neck, the cause of death was straightforward. Without looking up, she said, "And they aren't what you came here to find, are they?"

"I… No, of course not." Robin got to his feet again, just as Morgan deflated from a feathered beast to a girl standing in the middle of a ring of shed down. He turned his attention to her. "Morgan, head toward the main doors with Henry and keep an eye out for traps. Gaius—"

"On it, Bubbles," said the thief, following in the wake of two sunshine children.

Aversa let them get to it, staring at the dead.

Of the faithful who'd fought the Shepherds and failed to prevent their escape, Algol was the only one whose name she could put to a face. She resisted the urge to kick the corpse at her feet, because even her resolve to ruin everything Validar ever worked for didn't extend quite that far.

The Grimleal were her brother's enemies. For a long time, they'd been all Aversa had. And Robin had, directly or indirectly, killed everyone Aversa knew from her late childhood onward. There was a part of her that refused to entirely give up what she'd known for so long, even after everything they'd done. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest, as though she had any reason to regret her path now.

_ Coming back here was a mistake, _ Aversa thought. _ What am I even doing? _

The desert heat stopped bodies from completely putrefying, leaving gray-brown skin stretched patchily across exposed bits of yellowed bone. The red armor that this body wore had bleached paler, except for where it was stained with rust around the arrow sticking out of the faceplate. The maggots never got this far in the intense heat, leaving the corpse to dry into a broken mummy.

Aversa gripped the arrow in the general's corpse and pulled it out with a sharp jerk of her hand. Filth clung to the tip of the arrow, as much blood as bits of brain and a shriveled eye. The fletching, even now, retained a hint of blue.

"Virion got this one," Princess Lissa said, from far closer than Aversa expected. "I recognize the…" She waved her fingers at the feathers, looking ill. "The handicraft, I guess." She drew herself up to her full height, which put the top of her head about even with Aversa's shoulder. "Anyway, I was only coming over to let you know it's okay if you're upset."

"I swore to bring down everything Validar dreamed of—"

"Yeah, I heard you back in the Wellspring, when you were mostly still talking to Chrom and Robin," Princess Lissa interrupted, jutting her chin out defiantly. Impossibly, she rested a gloved hand on Aversa's arm as though to—to comfort her. "But it's not that simple, is it?"

Aversa let out a faint, unhappy laugh. "I wouldn't know. This is—" Aversa dropped the arrow and made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the entire courtyard with her free hand. "The only person I cared about was Validar. None of these people mattered to me then, so why would they now? More than a year after their deaths and only _ now _ do I feel regret, and for people who wanted to kill all of _ you? _What a wretched waste."

"Just because they wanted _ us _ dead doesn't mean they weren't everything to you, especially back then." Princess Lissa squeezed her arm, having not let go even when Aversa started snarling. Instead, she bore Aversa's instability with patience of a woman twice her age.

"And they betrayed me." But that was…wrong. Most of the Grimleal hadn't known who she was when she first arrived in their midst. Aversa's wrath had leapt from Validar to Grima solely because the former was too dead to be a target. And the Grimleal, with some minor exceptions, wouldn't have fully deserved the pain she could inflict. If she'd only seen through Validar's scheme earlier, this would all be much simpler. "Validar tricked me into being…anything. But I didn't even _ know _ until it was too late to change course. "

If there'd been any other Grimleal left by the time the Shepherds rescued her from the Wellspring, what would she have done? Killed them? Suffered from this belated attack of conscience alone?

Princess Lissa said, "Do you think the person you are now is better than you were then?"

"Then? I was a puppet dancing on Validar's strings," Aversa hissed, hostility in her voice out of pure reflex. "I could hardly be _ worse." _

Princess Lissa didn't flinch in the face of her anger. Maybe she was all too used to pain making petty fools of people. "You lost everything you cared about."

Aversa froze. Hearing it said out loud was worse than ice water.

"Even if what you had here wasn't good, it was _ all you had," _ Princess Lissa insisted. "As bad as it can be, all this was important to you once." She gripped Aversa's still hands, eyes bright. "So it's okay to grieve. It's the only way to accept what happened and move on."

_ I killed your sister, _ Aversa thought. _ I killed her not a hundred paces away, and you'd still comfort me. _

Aversa was saved from having to come up with a response to this by a colossal groaning noise. Her and Princess Lissa's heads whipped around to see Morgan slowly dragging the grand doors to the innards of the castle, using her dragon form to her advantage. Her deep bite into the wood splintered it, but the door remained intact enough by the will of some luck god to survive her attentions.

**"Got it, everyone!"** Morgan said, before once again transforming into a human shape. She stood aside and bowed. "One castle gate, newly in need of renovation!"

Henry pumped his arms in a cheer. "Yay, senseless violence!"

Gaius distinctly did not hand her or Henry a piece of candy, but he did nod approvingly.

It was a little difficult to have a heartfelt moment when the Shepherds were breaking things as background noise. Even as Princess Lissa puffed up in mild indignation, if only for the briefest time, Aversa felt the moment snap like a twig. It was a relief.

Aversa gently shook her hands free of Princess Lissa's. "The records hall awaits."

Princess Lissa's eyes darted across her face, searching for signs of distress. When she didn't find any, her shoulders drooped and she said, "Okay." With her pigtails bobbing, she broke away from Aversa to rush after her husband and friends. "Wait up, everyone!"

Aversa patted Sombra's nose before following in their wake, but at a much more measured pace.

* * *

"Wow, everyone really did just ditch this place to go see Grima," Henry said. "Look at all these dead people!"

Heading into Plegia Castle proper revealed that the Grimleal hadn't bothered with corpse disposal here, either. Dead Grimleal remained strewn across the hall, skeletons still wearing their armor and distinct rings of rot along the neglected floor. Amid the fervently-clutched weapons they'd wielded in life and a faint, sickly-sweet stench of decay, almost everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

After the courtyard, the worst part was honestly the dust. Everything else was officially old news.

Henry and Princess Lissa both sneezed one after the other, with the latter producing handkerchiefs out of a pocket after some fumbling.

"This might sound a bit weird, but I could've _ sworn _ you needed servants to run a castle. Unless they were all Grimleal sacrifices or fled or _ evaporated, _anyone who wanted to live here needed these bodies moved," said Tharja. At this point, she sounded more frustrated with the evidence that the last living people here had been the Shepherds. A whole, decently-luxurious living space, left to rot with its inhabitants for a year. "What were they planning on doing with this space? There's enough gold in this room's decorations to feed ten families for a decade."

She valued practical things, like bat wings and cursing her enemies into jelly with them, and this much waste irked even her.

"No kidding. If this was just sitting here this whole time, maybe I should've come back sooner," Gaius muttered, dropping to his haunches in front of a warrior's corpse to inspect it. He ran a gloved hand over the axe head still buried in those exposed ribs. "I'm not one for _ gratuitous _ grave-robbing, but there's a market for armor anywhere you go. And I think this is Vaike's. Huh. Guess he really didn't just lose his weapon back then."

Princess Lissa still looked ill, lips pressed into a whitening line and eyes skimming right over the corpses. While Aversa wouldn't waste time worrying over people who were trying to kill her at the time, Princess Lissa was not popular because she had a hardened heart. Quite the opposite. Compassion ruled her nature.

Robin rested a hand on her arm, consoling but with limited effectiveness. "We made it out. Don't focus too much on them for now."

Princess Lissa gripped her healing staff more tightly, blowing out a long, slow breath to steady her nerves. "Okay. I can do that."

"C'mon, Lissa. Here's something to get your mind off gross bodies." Henry's cape swirled in the dust as he walked, tugging his wife's hand gently. "Some of these doors would curse your eyeballs out if you opened them. Most of the curse-slingers I knew in the army couldn't break these. That sounds like bad planning to me!"

"That assumes a group worshipping the god of annihilation had any foresight beyond what Grima granted to suit his ends." Aversa said, her tone downright withering. She sighed. "Between the incident at the Dragon's Table, the Risen, and the fear we caused, no one likes to think about this place. And the Grimleal certainly never expected to _ survive _ Grima's ascension."

Robin and Tharja shared a look. There was nothing quite like seeing the poor decisions of one's forebears, even if the time between the past and the viewer was really quite short. Henry was a little too distracted to bother being solemn, even if he cared for the Grimleal beyond their utility as cursing targets.

Aversa felt her patience wearing thin with this place. Using the end of her boot, she tipped one of the bodies over with a cacophonous clang. "The archive is up the second set of stairs and to your right," Aversa said, once everyone's eyes were on her. "Mind the curses."

The light came back to Robin's eyes before he nodded to her, then led his thief-and-dark-mage team toward the records hall. Princess Lissa sent Aversa a worried look before following in her husband's wake, probably expecting to reattach fingers over the next few minutes.

Aversa watched them go, mouth fixed in a grimace. Drumming her fingers on her Ruin tome was unlikely to accomplish much, but she hadn't thought to bring along spell components beyond the tome itself. Each of the other dark mages did, in pouches and pockets or in wyvern saddlebags they'd already unloaded. They likely packed enough curse-breaking components to handle themselves.

"Aunt Aversa?" Morgan hadn't left yet.

"Please don't call me that," Aversa responded on reflex, then deliberately tried to unstick her frown. Focusing on the lovely view of a grinning skull, it was more difficult than it had to be.

"Aversa, then." Morgan's boot heels clicked on the floor until she could extend a gloved hand into Aversa's eyeline, palm-up and offering it to her. "Don't you want to see what's in there?"

"I've been in the room before," Aversa said, refusing the offered hand but at least tearing her gaze from the corpse. She took a slow breath to avoid dust, then said, "I lived here for five years."

Morgan's green brows pinched together. "Three with King Gangrel and two with Grandfather—um, with Validar. That must've been fun."

"It passed the time," Aversa replied, which was as positive as she could phrase her feelings on that subject right now. "And you ought to avoid calling Validar 'grandfather' while your father is in earshot."

"I mean, I only saw him twice, but…" As Morgan trailed off, uncertain, Aversa filled in the remainder of the sentence with, _ He wasn't always like that, was he? _

Validar hadn't even known Morgan was his kin. And if he had, _ Robin _ was the culmination of his hopes for resurrecting Grima. Morgan would either have been a hostage or a deadweight.

"Family is more than blood," Aversa said, surprising herself with the vehemence in her voice. Embarrassed, she hid her mouth with her hand before she added, in a mutter, "Gods know your father forged more ties with and between the Shepherds in three years than I've ever even heard of."

Morgan considered this, then nodded. "So, since you didn't even really answer, do you want to see what's in—"

From the hall above, there was an explosion and a lot of coughing.

"Father!" Morgan jumped like a scalded cat, coat whirling in her wake as she took the stairs upward three at a time.

Aversa walked much more slowly and used the ornate handrail, because the lack of screaming indicated she did not have to worry about injuries. Might as well not turn an ankle or something.

Sure enough, the hallway was partly obscured by foul-smelling green smoke. Thanks to a nearby window, that situation would not stand for long. Especially if Morgan kept frantically fanning the cloud with her thick sleeves, dragon feathers possibly waiting to help, there wouldn't be much trouble from this trap.

"You shouldn't have tried that spell so early," Tharja said, emerging from the cloud with her fingers pinching her nose firmly shut.

"Aw, it's fine," Henry replied. "You took care of the backwash like a champ!"

"Is that why everything smells like death?" Aversa asked in a dry voice. "Again?"

"Nya ha ha, probably!"

"I'm going to assume we're all fine, since no one's screaming," Robin said with a cough, unknowingly echoing Aversa's thoughts from earlier.

"By the way, the door's open," Gaius announced from the back. "Also, someone please use a Wind tome or something."

Once the stink cloud was dealt with (by Princess Lissa's Arcwind tome), Robin led the way into the archives.

The room was mostly unchanged from what Aversa remembered. There were three windows up a pair of unreliable, free-standing stairs, casting the room in grayish light through a thick layer of dust. Sure, the dull flickering of long-neglected light crystals failed to illuminate the lower floor or its secondary corridors, but the shelves remained intact with all of their contents. There weren't even any corpses in here—no self-respecting Grimleal would cower in a record room while the fight in the castle was ongoing.

Hence the bodies everywhere _ else. _

Though someone had tipped a table on its side, like a shield. Gaius walked over and righted it with a grunt. He dusted his hands off on his cloak, eyeing the dubious gray cloud with some annoyance.

Tharja set a fingertip on the table and blew every particle of dust and cobwebs neatly to the floor with a single spell. Going by the way her eyes traced the shelves, though, she hadn't put even half her focus into that little convenience curse. Just as well, given how they'd need both time and power to sort through the archive here with any success.

A pity the librarian had been dismissed by Gangrel. No one had hired a replacement, because a king who rose from nothing obviously knew everything. The Grimleal, in turn, were nothing if not certain.

Once again, Princess Lissa sneezed. This time, Morgan handed her a handkerchief in time to catch the second, third, and fourth sneezes.

"Where should we start?" Robin asked, staring at the shelves of occasionally marked tomes and a worrying number of blank spines.

Aversa considered their options. They stood in the middle of the recreational library, insofar as Plegia Castle ever had one. Most of the books here were local creations, but Plegia did not have a printing or publishing system akin to Ylisse's.

"Ledgers were kept in that room," Aversa said after a few seconds to think about it, pointing to the far corridor. "But personal records might be in the nearer one." She shrugged, hands held up to deflect blame. "There's no way to get around the time we're going to spend looking. The library hasn't had an organization system past that in years."

Robin muttered something under his breath about the more scholarly mages who were absent for this trip, then nodded to himself. "Henry, Tharja, take the record room. Any dark magic tomes are yours. Everyone else… Well, we'll see."

Despite only a third of their group being assigned a task, the others fanned out to explore. Within seconds, Gaius and Princess Lissa started righting the room. Both of them kept half an eye on the shelves, but clearly more out of the expectation of more magical traps than anything. At the same time, Henry and Tharja cracked the far room open by cursing the door into splinters and then stepping through the wreckage.

Robin eyed the dark mage duo's wake with an air of exasperation, then opened the other door just by turning the handle. He disappeared into the likely musty room like a shadow, thoroughly distracted.

Morgan reached up to grip Aversa's shoulder. While Aversa startled, she said in a bright voice, "Father, I'm going to go make sure there aren't any Risen in the castle. Remember to tell me if you find anything interesting!"

Robin, mind clearly occupied by so many books, called back without peeking out, "You'll be the first to know, if I can manage it."

"Great!" And with that, Morgan pushed Aversa none-too-gently toward the same room. "I'll be right back."

Aversa didn't dare head into the room until she caught Gaius's eye, pointing almost frantically in the direction of Morgan's vanishing coat tails. Morgan was tougher than most, but _ anyone _ could get into too much trouble to handle alone. Aversa had no intention of letting her almost-niece trip headfirst into trouble unsupervised.

The redheaded thief sighed, stuck another candy of some kind in his mouth, and hurried after her.

Then Aversa finally, finally entered the side room.

Between the long abandonment and the lack of maintenance even before then, Robin's new study room reeked of mold and decaying paper. Rows upon rows of record ledgers seemed to lean inward from the walls. The grimy window letting light into the room was partly blocked by a rotting curtain, but the room's sole occupant was determined.

As before, Robin held a little ball of light in his hand as a stand-in candle. He peered down at the columns of names and numbers, looking for some familiarity.

"You look like you could use a second set of eyes," Aversa said over her shoulder, already moving to poke through the shelves. "Or a third."

"That didn't help Grima," Robin replied, with just a touch of humor. "Six eyes and he still didn't see us coming."

"Oh, the tragedy of having a skull too large to fit indoors." Aversa paused. "Now that I think of it, Grima's ancient bones might have made a decent grain silo if we Plegians ever properly hollowed out that skull. Pity."

When Aversa plucked her selections from the shelf, she turned to find Robin giving her a complicated look. He seemed caught between warring impulses to laugh or just shake his head helplessly. After a few seconds, he covered his face with his left hand to hide the snicker.

Aversa set her chosen books on the table, pulling out a chair so she could begin studying along with him. While she'd never be an academic the way that Miriel was, or a history enthusiast like Robin, she was more familiar with the way Plegian records were written and stored than either. The next-best experts Robin had brought with him.

He and his friends had killed most of the preexisting experts the Grimleal hadn't. Scholars who opposed the Validar's schemes tended to die, even before mass human sacrifice became his favored method of killing thousands.

"Aversa."

Aversa glanced up over the top edge of the ledger. Robin had his head propped up on one fist, but was still looking her way. "Yes?"

"In case I didn't say it before," Robin went on, "I'm glad you're here now."

Aversa eyed him, then shook her head. "I could hardly leave you to flounder." As though he didn't have plenty of help before scooping her out of that backwater village. Aversa never did play well with sincerity. "Regardless, you can stop wasting daylight any time now."

"You say that like we won't be here for at least a few full days," Robin said somewhat dryly, but let the conversation die there.

For the next few hours, they pored over their sources. Many of the tax records had been torched—common when dealing with a new regime—but they searched regardless. As time went on, they accumulated dog-eared records that spread across the table like some strange growth, and marked the pages with scraps of paper scrounged from a water-warped journal Robin no longer used.

Gaius and Morgan returned, then left with Princess Lissa, and then returned again. Each time, one of them would drop some form of field ration in front of the researchers. On their last trip, they brought the packs from the mounts up from the courtyard and set up an ad-hoc camp in the library. By the time the sun began to paint the sky orange and red, the three patrolling Shepherds made themselves at home. Not long afterward, Tharja and Henry bore down on the second research room with their arms piled high with yet more books.

"Find anything yet?" Tharja asked.

"I've found some boring stuff from the reign of King Giram, but I really don't have a clue how old that is." Henry said. He waved a book under Aversa's nose. "And it's only about how big the army was back in those days."

"That's still something." Robin said, snatching the book away before Aversa had a chance to become irritated. He flipped to Henry's marked page and started writing notes, as though taking the book was a part of the plan the entire time.

"King Giram lived a century ago," Tharja said, as Henry walked out again, humming. She sat at the table with her hands folded together, a frown on her face. "You didn't answer my question, Robin."

"I think everything from the last fifteen years is gone, and I don't know where I'd start to look for any backup records." Robin admitted. "Gangrel was in power for, what, five years? It doesn't look like there's a single census left from the last two hundred years."

"Six, going by his coronation date," Tharja replied. Her dark purple eyes drifted toward Aversa, who pretended not to notice. "I wasn't in the capital, but the party lasted for a week. And the Grimleal were, of course, out in force."

Aversa turned a page, ignoring her.

At the time, Validar hadn't yet pushed the idea of Aversa as Gangrel's chief strategist and consort. Internal politics among the Grimleal gave the Fellblood's sire significant power, but losing track of Robin for so long pushed Validar further down the ranks over time. He only rose again after Aversa managed to get Gangrel wrapped around her finger and, as any dutiful daughter would, made sure her father benefited as she did.

Aversa deliberately unclenched her fingers before her nails drew blood.

"The old royal family fell before the end of the war, seventeen years ago. If Gangrel wanted to raise enough money to fund his army, he needed tax records and census data. I just don't know if Validar kept any of it," Robin mused, half to himself. "Any time a new king rises, there's a chance some information needs to be…lost."

"Ylisse doesn't have that problem," Tharja said, half as a question. "Not even after the death of the previous Exalt."

"No, but there's been violent upheaval everywhere at some point," Robin said. He scribbled a few more notes, then sighed. He ran a gloved hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. "I've been staring at these pages for too long. How about we take a break for dinner?"

"Long overdue, I think." Tharja almost smiled, then headed out.

Not a handful of seconds later, Aversa heard Gaius call a greeting to his wife, and then make a noise like "Oof!" She decided not to speculate.

Robin got up and cracked his back, as a direct consequence of spending too much time hunched over a book. He stretched each finger as he started to leave, griping under his breath, before he paused. He turned back and said, "Aversa?"

Despite her exhaustion, Aversa only turned another page and said, "I'm staying here."

"You don't need to push yourself like that," Robin said, but caution crept into his tone. Like he expected a fight if he pushed.

"You'll find I do," Aversa replied. When Robin hesitated to leave or speak, she added, "Spare me your worry. The war is over. My greatest foe now is eye strain."

Robin wavered. He lifted a hand as though to reach for her, then let his arm dropped. "I'll save your dinner for you."

Aversa flapped a hand dismissively, and so he went.

By the time Robin returned with her meal—a porridge studded haphazardly with dried fruit—Aversa's research turned up yet more halfway-useful fluff. Someone's personal journal was crammed between two heavy historical volumes, and the jagged handwriting took Aversa longer to interpret than any of the official documents.

Robin, perhaps seeing that Aversa's mood hadn't improved, didn't comment on her hostility. Instead, he retreated from the room to investigate whatever Henry had found in the other room after dinner passed.

"You really are a piece of work," Tharja's voice said, interrupting Aversa's thought process some time later.

Aversa glanced up again, then deliberately popped every single knuckle in her hands without breaking eye contact. Then, when Tharja still refused to elaborate, Aversa steepled her fingers amid the wreckage of several ledgers and said, "So I've been informed. I've also heard the same about you."

"No need to go turning it back on me so soon," Tharja said, sweeping into the room despite having left her cape elsewhere. "I don't recall saying I hated you."

"That was rather thoroughly implied by your behavior," Aversa told her, raising one eyebrow skeptically. "Neither of us has held a proper conversation with the other until _ now, _ either."

Tharja sat down in the chair across from her, where Robin had been scant hours earlier. "It takes a certain kind of mind to excel in dark magic." While Aversa's skeptical brow climbed higher at the change of topic, Tharja went on, "Or just inner darkness. But for me, it's a badge of honor. I worked to get as far as I have, both in reading people and in tearing them apart." Her dark eyes narrowed. "You're conflicted. That makes you unreliable, and half the people I care about in this world are _ here. _ I may be wicked, but that's not all there is to me."

Which might have explained why Tharja was the person who, after Robin, was most likely to confront her fellow Shepherds about their hidden pain. Obsessing over Robin, due to his nature as a keystone among the Ylissean army, forced Tharja to mitigate weaknesses where she found them. If that also forced her to care about them as people, so much the better.

Tharja's view of the world was narrow, but keen within that radius.

So was Aversa's.

"Tharja," Aversa said, after the sullen quiet between them stretched to snapping, "my days of being a puppet are over. And because there seems to be nothing of further interest here," she added, finally leaving the table, "I am going to sleep. We'll break into the royal quarters tomorrow."

"You didn't mention that possibility before."

Aversa stopped, halfway out of the room and into the room full of sleeping Shepherds. She turned back instead, at the judgmental specter who might've been one of her nameless subordinates once.

Tharja stared back, biting her thumbnail as though suddenly nervous.

"Exorcising Validar's ghost involves digging up every secret he ever kept. Including what he did to me," Aversa said, suddenly bone-tired. All her earlier musings on pitting her strength against Tharja's made her heart ache. She _ had _ been a threat this woman had to account for. For years. Even now, no one forgot. "Forgive my cowardice."

That was the last she spoke to anyone that night. After eating late, Aversa curled up in her bedroll while using a wadded-up cloak as a pillow, with her back to the wall and her tome under her hand. It placed her as the first line of defense against any other intruders, though doubtless the others would wake swinging if necessary.

The night passed almost unnoticed.

Until Morgan, moving in her sleep as always, flung out an arm and struck Aversa in the small hours of the morning. When Aversa sat up and rubbed sleep sand out of her eyes, the bluish light of pre-dawn let her count her companions, spread out across the floor.

Henry and Princess Lissa, tangled up together like puppies in a litter under both of their cloaks. Neither stirred, despite the sound of impact.

Tharja sitting up with her back to a bookshelf, Gaius asleep and curled around her. She glanced up from beneath her level bangs to meet Aversa's searching, drowsy gaze, then turned her attention back to the book propped up on her knees. However tensely their conversation last night had ended, there was no fear in those eyes now.

And closest of all to Aversa, Morgan sprawled half-in, half-out of her bedroll, snoring. Going by the space around her on the floor, Robin was originally on her other side, but he was gone by the time Morgan became restless.

Aversa pressed a hand over her eyes.

Maybe she'd feel better in a few hours, when she finally set all that remained of Validar's memory aflame.

* * *

It turned out that Robin, besides wandering the castle to search for possible Risen incursions, had gone to feed their mounts. When he returned, the group roused itself and began preparations for the day. Without plans to travel—until some new breakthrough released them from their stay in the world's least-liked castle—they ascended the castle not long after breakfast.

Aversa stopped the entire group before they could enter the final doorway, one hand raised and dripping purplish sparks like blood.

"Is there some kind of trap that kills intruders?" Gaius asked, peering past her.

"No," Aversa said. She turned her right hand toward the heavy mahogany doors, while her left curled around the spine of her Ruin tome. "I just wanted to do this."

A burst of purple flame ripped through the air with a roar, flanked by orange spell-sigils. Its overlapping layers consumed the closest parts of the door, and the back bowed away from the spell as though in terror. With a final, thunderous crack, the door shattered into dust and splinters.

Aversa led the way through the mess and stepped into the royal chambers. While Gaius immediately snapped up some gold trinket or other, the others fanned out to explore. By the way Henry's voice echoed as Aversa headed for the bedroom, he'd found the royal water closet. Morgan's laughter went quiet, but the sound of a shattering window gave her away.

"Where do you think…?" Robin began, following Aversa as she strode through the space without pausing.

"Validar used a writing desk near the bed," Aversa told him, and upon reaching the bedroom door, hexed that to pieces too. "Honestly, between the decade-old tax records and the possibility that the family records of Grimleal and nobles alike were purged, your burgeoning council might as well begin from nothing."

Robin sighed, as was becoming more frequent, before doing his best to turn the elaborate bedroom (and all its depictions of the Mark of Grima) inside-out.

"That is the biggest bed I've ever seen," said Princess Lissa, marching directly up to the four-poster bed with its silk curtains and carved bedposts. She drew the curtains aside with the end of her healing staff, whistling in half-sarcastic awe. "The wealth really does go right to the top."

"Now _ that _ is a fact of life," said Gaius, spinning a jeweled pen between his fingers before tucking it into a pocket. His green gaze landed on the bed, and then he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and the mother-of-pearl inlay. "Say, Bubbles, since Validar was the king of Plegia, and he was your old man, does that make you the next king?"

"A throne is meaningless without the people behind it." Robin grimaced. He blew dust off a leather-bound journal, then said, "Every Plegian who'd follow me is within fifteen paces. We invaded _ twice, _ and each time we killed a king."

"And now we're robbing them." Gaius's amusement sat strangely with Aversa, but she had no real criticism she could put into words. "Or you, depending."

"Not me," Robin repeated, then flipped the journal open.

Gaius shrugged, heading back out of the room. "Let me know if you need something broken into instead of exploded," he called over his shoulder.

"Of course," Robin replied, though his attention was clearly on picking through whatever he was reading this time.

The elaborate desk he'd torn apart stood with its drawers hanging open, coughing letters onto the floor. They'd burn well when Aversa got to them.

"Princess Lissa, would you please move a few paces to your left?" Aversa said, shaking off that thought.

"Sure!"

The instant she did so, Aversa hooked her fingers into the bedding and channeled a hex all the way down to the frame. The mattress leapt like a spooked horse and careened across the room, striking the opposite wall and breaking whatever was already there. Glass objects died all at once.

But there, under the bedframe, were letters marked with the old royal seal stamped firmly in wax carrying only a hint of sandalwood. Under that, practically crumbling under Aversa's hands, was a tome large enough to properly concuss someone. When Aversa hexed the spiderwebs and dust away from it, the title was clear as day.

_ Great Houses of Plegia. _

Aversa hauled the gigantic book—enough to account for a thousand years' worth of noble births—onto the floor. She picked through it until she found what passed for the index, then skipped to the royal family. "Well, well, well. This could be useful."

And who even knew when it'd been hidden, however badly?

"I hope it's not too out of date," Princess Lissa said. "The archivists in Ylisse only record basic things in books like this, like birth and death dates. There are whole other books for stories of specific Exalts, or heroes, or anything."

"And likely each house keeps better records of their own," Aversa said, nodding distractedly. She braced the book on the edge of the bedframe, drawing her finger down the lines as she read. There were hundreds of names across the centuries, but the only ones that mattered were at the end.

"Oh, here's that king Tharja talked about." Princess Lissa tapped the page a split second. "He had five children…"

"And lived a century ago."

"Still!"

But because Aversa concentrated hard enough to be off-putting, Princess Lissa got up and walked over to where Robin's book was clearly so engrossing that he hadn't heard a word either of them said.

Princess Lissa prodded him. "Hey, Robin, I found a frog."

"That's nice, Lissa." Robin replied distractedly.

"He's going to be your new best friend. My brother's replacement! From your hood, right he—"

"Aagh! That's not a frog!"

Aversa, meanwhile, didn't look up to see what was happening. Instead, she kept tracing the crackly pages and family trees with a frown furrowing her brow. When she found what she was looking for, the pair of them were busy throwing bits of feather mattress at each other.

Quite a way to break tension, she supposed.

Aversa cleared her throat and the pair of them froze, as though caught in some illicit act more damning than immaturity. She pretended not to notice and said, "Robin, how much do you remember of your past?"

"Literally everything before meeting Chrom and Lissa is a total blank," Robin replied. Feathers cascaded off his coat as he, along with his book and Princess Lissa, crossed the room to peer at her findings. While looking over her shoulder, he added, "I don't even know how old I am."

"Well, congratulations, because it appears you turned twenty-five this summer." She turned around and placed the huge book in Robin's arms.

He let the weight of it drive him to the ground. "What—?"

"Isn't this a book on nobility?" Princess Lissa asked, confused. She knelt next to them, forming a circle.

"Yes, but it appears Validar…" Well, Aversa didn't think of the man as "married," but perhaps Robin did. "...had a child with a woman thirty-five ranks away from the Plegian throne. Her name was Morrigan."

Robin silently mouthed the name, running his finger across the page. Right next to the tiny entry about her—born fifty-odd years ago in the palace—was a similarly sparse box about Robin.

_ White hair. Brown eyes. _

That was it. No location. No acknowledgement of the involvement the Grimleal claimed in breeding a new vessel for the Fell Dragon. As though Validar's ranting about how he and his father hadn't been worthy of Grima's power, but _ Robin— _

Oh, how he'd raged. Not for the loss of a son, but for fate defied.

"You somehow managed to name your daughter after her grandmother despite everything," Aversa said, her voice as soft as she could manage. She shoved down her other worries, because everyone who cared about those aspects of Robin's history was thoroughly dead.

Robin managed a smile, but it sat ill enough on his face to threaten something far less amenable. "I suppose some version of me did. Amazing."

"Do you think that means you might get your memories back?" Princess Lissa asked. "Since the younger Morgan isn't born yet?"

Robin looked between them, chewing on his lip. "Maybe I went on a trip like this, and dug up this book."

"We could dunk you in the Wellspring of Truth sometime before then," Aversa suggested, still trying for gentleness that never came naturally. "It could bring something back."

But Robin shook his head, saying only, "I tried when we found you. Nothing changed." Instead of waiting for another suggestion, Robin got to his feet and pressed the journal into Aversa's hands. "Here, I—I need some air. Excuse me."

Aversa watched him head to the balcony, but held out a hand for Princess Lissa immediately moved to follow him. With her hand on the girl's shoulder, she said softly, "Would you mind finding Morgan and sending her here? I won't let him out of my sight."

"Oh no, this isn't a time for standing back and being all awkward." Princess Lissa put her hands on her hips, dislodging Aversa's hand in her sudden disapproval. "I'll go get Morgan, but _ you _ should go give him a hug."

Before Aversa could argue, she was already out of the room and calling for Morgan.

Aversa glanced at the journal in her hand again, took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the balcony. She almost immediately ended up shoulder to shoulder with Robin, because there was hardly any space. This was a personal construction by some previous ruler of Plegia, not a platform for grand proclamations.

Robin didn't turn to face her, but said, "I wonder what she was like."

"Your mother?" Aversa asked, though her tone stayed flat.

Robin nodded. "I'm sure I must have known her before, but every memory is just…gone." He leaned out over the railing, arms crossed. "Along with everything else. Maybe that's why I'm not as upset as I thought I would be."

Aversa folded her arms, too. "I'm afraid I can't help you with finding out much more. I was inducted into the Grimleal long after her departure."

"I wasn't expecting you to." Robin turned, suddenly back to attention. "I didn't mean that the way it came out. I shouldn't snap at you."

"You've said worse. So have I." Aversa shrugged. "But perhaps you can look at it a different way, too."

"How so?"

"Going by the record, we can infer that your mother named you." At Robin's skeptical look, Aversa went on, "Validar would not have given you a name that sounded so sweet, nor would he have given it to royal archivists. As far as he was concerned, the only name that ever mattered was Grima's."

Robin's gaze went distant, or perhaps just thoughtful.

"Here is the truth," Aversa said softly, leaning against Robin's side, "you are alive and you are _ here,_ on yet another mission to build this peaceful world. You have created a family out of people who marched to war together." _ Including me. _ "And I think your mother would be very happy to see how far you've come."

Robin leaned back, closing his eyes with a quiet hum of acknowledgement.

The pair of them took a deep breath each, facing the blasted, thrice-cursed land below. From sufficient distance like this, the painful past seemed far away. Even the land itself stirred somewhat, with distant thunder carrying across the desert. In Plegia, storms threatened rain so rarely that Aversa was surprised to see the afternoon sky going dark. Lightning lanced down from the horizon, flanked by what could only be the front of a downpour more typical of Valm's plains.

When Robin finally spoke, his voice was so quiet that she nearly didn't hear him over the sound of driving wind. While her hair whipped around wildly, she heard, "You really underestimate your kindness."

"Perhaps." Even saying it out loud drew a faint smile to her face before she mastered her expression. "As I am now…" Aversa rested her chin on her palm as thunder crashed. The wind roared. Her heart ached, but not from loneliness. "All of this is a learning process. But I know I feel more alive with all of you than I have in the last year."

"Does that mean you're finally going to accept that we're family?" Morgan's voice chirped from behind them. Before either Robin or Aversa could get out of her way, she shoved an arm between them and pushed her way through, then wrapped an arm around each of their backs. "Sorry, I only heard that last part!"

While Morgan's grip made it a little hard to breathe, Aversa managed to say, "Were you truly waiting for me to admit that?"

"Yeah!"

"Not _ just _ that, of course," Robin added, sounding just as strained. Unwilling to elbow his daughter, he tried struggling for a few seconds before his shoulders slumped in defeat.

"Then we should tell you the good news. Right, Father?" Morgan craned her neck to stare into her father's face, probably making puppy eyes at him.

"Is this the great mystery you've teased for days?" Aversa asked, deciding that she might as well rest her chin on top of Morgan's head. If the girl didn't want to let go, Aversa didn't have the physical strength to remove her.

"It's nothing nefarious!" Morgan assured her, tilting her head back far enough to see Aversa's face.

Aversa smirked. "Pity."

Robin let out a groan, then said, "Morgan—"

"I'm gonna be a big sister!" Morgan burst out, releasing her father (who stumbled, gasping) and picking Aversa up in a gleeful bear hug. They spun around in a circle before Morgan let her go. "Right now we don't know when Mother might have her, though, so she had to stay in Ylisse until we finished all this."

Aversa stumbled a bit, then said, "Are you sure the baby will be a girl?"

The tiniest frown formed on Morgan's brow. "I guess we don't. But I'll be a big sister either way!" She bounced in place, grinning from ear to ear. "Wow, it's such a relief to be able to tell someone."

When he noticed Aversa's raised eyebrow, Robin said, "She says that to everyone."

"Am I actually the last to know? I need more information to decide how annoyed I ought to be."

"No, no, we've more or less been telling people as we see them," Robin admitted. He scratched the back of his head. "Given how far many of us traveled after the war, I think the last people to know will be Lucina and Laurent."

"…They went somewhere unusual?"

"The last letter they sent to Chrom and Sumia was from _ Chon'sin." _

"Then I shall forgive you," Aversa concluded. The very picture of benevolence.

"Wonderful." Robin did not _ have _ to sound even that sardonic, but at least he smiled.

"Hooray!" Beaming, Morgan added, "So, does that mean you'll come back to Ylisse with us?"

Aversa looked down at Morgan's bright expression, pursed her lips, and made a show of thinking it over. In the _ instant _ after the girl's face fell in the slightest, she heaved a great sigh and said, "I suppose if I want to be a proper aunt, I must."

Morgan threw her arms in the air with a whoop, then ran off to talk to the other members of the party.

Aversa waved vaguely in the direction she'd gone. "Do you know if the child is going to be her younger self?"

Robin shrugged helplessly. "I could pretend, but we've had that discussion enough times to never be certain. Aside from Lucina, none of them were born here before they traveled back, so there is no real way to know until…" He trailed off, doubtful.

"I cannot begin to imagine the headache that causes."

"Good," Robin muttered. He cleared his throat. "At any rate, we'll be happy to have you in Ylisstol. If you want to be there."

"Perhaps not _ directly _ in Ylisstol," Aversa hedged, because there was such a thing as too much self-assurance. She still carried the sins of the last war, even if Ylisse _had_ prospered since. "But certainly closer to the rest of the Shepherds."

In the next two rooms, the others' voices rose and ebbed as Morgan chatted happily with them. Princess Lissa and Henry's laughter punctuated Gaius and Tharja's lower voices, but everyone sounded cheerful enough. Robin even clapped a hand on Aversa's shoulder again, smiling.

To her surprise, Aversa's heart no longer clenched painfully at the camaraderie. Even the gentlest reintroduction to the Shepherds' kindness helped her heal. She let her fist rest against her chest, silently marveling at the relief.

"Once we leave this castle," Aversa said, after a few more minutes of relative peace, "I have little to do in this country other than to collect my things from the house. And…" She let the half-formed thought drop into the abyss, then said, "Robin, while I still have no interest in _ ruling _ anything or anyone, I was one of the better-positioned people in the courts of Plegia's last two kings. If you can guarantee I will not have power beyond that of any Ylissean in Plegia's affairs, some of what I know may be useful to your interim council."

Robin hid a laugh. "That's a lot of caveats."

"I can think of no other circumstances in which they might accept my knowledge," Aversa said. "Other than perhaps as one of many on a quest to kill all Risen still lurking in the world. Perhaps that will serve as partial reparation for all damage I've done. A great book of nobility and some land records are barely a drop in the sea."

"We'll talk more about it when we go home," Robin said, leaning against her side again. "Right?"

"Of course."

And now that Aversa had "home" somewhere in her future, it didn't seem quite so daunting.

* * *

**Some Time Later...**

Aversa hadn't quite gotten her left foot out of the stirrup before the door to Robin's Ylisstol home slammed open, startling Sombra. As the pegasus smacked Aversa with a wing and almost knocked her to the flagstones before realizing there was no true threat, a bright voice called out: "Auntie!"

There was a bit of chaos that ended when Aversa disentangled herself and Morgan also took a wing to the face, but eventually everyone was allowed to stand on their own two feet without additional silliness. Sure, Aversa had to shake a loose feather or two out of her hair, but this was a small price to pay for the fastest possible transportation to Ylisstol.

"I'm so glad you could make it," Morgan said, grasping Aversa's hands and grinning broadly. "She's going to love you."

"'She?' Have they not come up with a name?" Aversa was not certain, but most of the children she knew of had…probably been named almost immediately after being born. Likely after a relative.

Morgan's grip inexorably drew Aversa toward the door, pulling her inside. "Come on, this way!"

"You didn't answer my question, dear."

Morgan ignored her, again. She didn't appear to hear a single thing said amid her excitement, and dragged Aversa through the halls until they came to a doorway "guarded" by no-longer-a-princess Lissa. At that point, Morgan slipped through the door, calling out, "Mother, Father, and tiny baby, Aunt Aversa's here!"

Aversa didn't immediately follow. Instead, she said to Lissa, "Am I the last one to hear about this?"

"Never," Lissa said instantly. She eased the door open, allowing the voices in the room to creep out. "Come on, you've got to beat the rush."

Aversa swallowed, then stepped through to what turned out to be a nursery.

Robin and Morgan sat on the floor on a brightly-colored rug, next to a lounging Tiki. The nearby crib lay empty, but the entire family was gathered around a tiny, squirming shape wrapped in her mother's arms. It was a calm, serene moment ruined only by the way Morgan's head whipped around to focus on Aversa's face.

Morgan frantically waved Aversa over, scooting to one side to give her some space. With no choice but to obey, she slowly made her way across the room and knelt on the floor with them.

"'Do you want to hold her?" Tiki asked in a whisper. Her long green hair lay loose around her shoulders, well within the baby's grabbing distance. Perhaps that was the point. With the baby in her arms, Tiki looked more peaceful than she ever had when Aversa spoke with her before.

Aversa's eyes burned with unshed tears. "I would be honored." Her hands were astonishingly steady as she took hold of the little bundle, careful to cradle the baby's head.

A tiny pink face poked out of the blankets, topped by wispy strands of green hair. An equally small hand flexed slowly, just below the child's chin.

"Hello, little one," Aversa murmured, extending a finger into easy reach. "Aren't you precious?"

The baby grabbed it like she'd never let go. She opened her eyes, dark as Morgan's, and peered up at the strange new face above her. No recognition dawned in that little face, but it was far too early for that.

Aversa smiled even as tears blurred her vision.

Here, with these people, there would always be a home.

* * *

**Further Notes:** That "unnamed" baby is totally this timeline's version of Morgan.

Heath and Travant, the wyverns, are named after wyvern-riding characters from _Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade_ and _Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War_.


End file.
